New Animal

by Ella Baxter

  Before I start the engine of the Camry, I swipe sweat from my forehead and rummage through the compartment and map pockets looking for a stray water bottle. The interior has absorbed the heat, and the flesh of my thighs stick together, making me feel slightly hysterical. Sweat dots my upper lip and I wipe it away with the back of my hand before unwinding the windows. I’m about to pull out of the car park when I see my mother jogging towards me.

  She leans through the window, panting. ‘You heading to the lookout?’

  ‘Yeah, just for a bit,’ I say, hand on the steering wheel, ready to go.

  ‘Need to commune with nature?’

  ‘Always,’ I say.

  ‘Do you ever feel his presence there?’

  ‘Nope. Just a good view.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The lookout is at the highest point of one of the largest subtropical banana plantations in the area. I drive fast up the winding road with both windows down, letting the smell of rotting bananas fill my nostrils and the harsh screech of cicadas invade my ears.

  The plantation belongs to Floyd, a hinterland council representative. You can find him on a Thursday night hosting the RSL meat raffle, and in between calling out numbers he talks about his life. Settling down with a Scottish tourist in the eighties hadn’t agreed with him, we all know that. She lasted about a year, which was long enough for her to have a baby and to frighten Floyd away from any further relationships. Women, he would say, speaking too closely into the microphone, while the meat turned warm under the cling film in front of him, are pure madness.

  The tail end of summer has turned some of the bananas black on their stems, and the demented hiss of insects wraps around the mountain like a girdle, creating an irregular vibration that rises and falls with the wind. Sometimes, when I’ve come here after it’s rained heavily, the mountain looks like a tower of white deluge, racing down to the highway below. Other times, I’ve seen thin tornadoes out at sea, swirling across the horizon, as the palms flap their wide, flat leaves to the sky, beckoning them to shore.

  The lookout is flanked by two giant camphor laurel trees, and when I turn off the ignition, a flock of screeching black cockatoos erupts from the low branches. There’s a crankiness to the landscape up here. Everything is too tightly packed in. The understorey is compacted by Range Rovers that are occasionally crushed by boulders rolling down from the cliffs, which are crumbling under the pressure of too many new-build apartments. My mother says the whole coastline is cursed from the violence of colonisation. She says that this land doesn’t want us on it, and like a bucking horse it will try to throw us off.

  I walk down the dirt path to the rickety platform, looking over the town and all the way out to the container ships at sea. It’s so close to the ocean that, by the time I leave, I will be able to trace a finger over one eyebrow and wipe away a sticky film of salt.

  The lookout is where Floyd’s son, Daniel, decided to jump last year, and I have come here most days since then. There is something very decisive about throwing your body from a cliff because you’ve written an ending in which you will either be very hurt or gone completely. People throw rubbish from car windows, toss broken toys over the back fence, fling apple cores and olive pits out of windows—generally people discard things that are not needed. Daniel threw his body like it was nothing, and it has stuck inside me ever since. And maybe it is because he could have been any of the men I met online. Or that the shirt he wore was the same brand as the ones Simon liked to wear. Or the note he left, scrawled on the back of a receipt like an afterthought—This is nobody’s fault. When I found out about the note, I saw the word, mentally, as no body. It was nobody’s fault and yet his body was flung away. Ever since, I go to the ravine and stand on the edge; it helps me to know that humans are too sensitive for a world as hectic and harsh as this. There is an unbearable volume of chaos and beauty to endure and enjoy in one small, short life.

  After Daniel’s death I had a duty to live in double time. I squashed his existence into my own and took it upon myself to jump into everything for both of us. My body could take the baton he passed me and jog us both forward.

  Floyd told me that in the week before he died, Daniel lost control of his sedan and drove into one of the banana-packing sheds. He was fine, and the car was fine, but we all think it must have rattled something inside of him loose, because he came so close to dying and he didn’t seem to mind. Maybe the realisation that he wasn’t attached to himself was all he needed to completely detach.

  I did his make-up for the service. Hid the lower half of his body. Buttoned him into his favourite tropical dress shirt. But all I could think about were his legs. Shins. Ankles. Feet. I shouldn’t think these thoughts—no one should really—but you can’t jump off a platform like this and not invert. In the coroner’s report it said that he was found at a distance from the edge, which means he would have run as fast as he could before jumping, and when I stand at the lookout I imagine him sprinting from the car park towards the rocky ledge. Chest forward, his eyes focused on the skyline ahead. Sometimes I wonder if, like Daniel, I have the ability to be so out of sync with myself that both my body and mind seek to annihilate each other. Sometimes I wonder if all of us metaphorically throw our body from cliffs every day of the week.

  I lean on the railing and open my phone to check if there are any responses from the night before.

  Fauzi: You’re a bit keen aren’t you, cheeky girl

  Nathaniel: Not sure what time were you thinking

  Rafi: Possibly, what time?

  Liam: What time???

  Liam wins. I delete the rest, and tell him to pick up a bottle of red wine and send me his address.

  He writes back to say that he also likes red, and that I shouldn’t worry, he’s not a murderer, and he hopes I don’t now think he is. Har har, he writes, see you soon then.

  Har har, I write back, then I look up his address and let him know I’m half an hour away.

  Liam lives one block away from the university in a peeling weatherboard house surrounded by a decaying wooden fence. A choko vine has managed to weave its way from the back of the property all the way to the front, and forms a bright green canopy between the roof and the carport. I pick my way carefully along the broken concrete path between the letterbox and the front door, where I slap the metal flyscreen loudly.

  Heavy footsteps thud down the hall, and Liam swings the door open.

  ‘We have a doorbell,’ he says.

  He is dressed in corduroy pants and a rugby jersey, and is about a foot taller than me, with bright blond hair that I suspect he artificially lightens; it’s not the sun doing all that work. He looks like the majority of his photos, which is a relief.

  He steps aside to let me in, and I enter a house filled with the heady aroma of body odour and marijuana.

  ‘How’s your day so far?’ he asks.

  ‘Amazing,’ I say.

  I follow him down the hall, passing a plastic mannequin draped in fairy lights.

  ‘Cool dummy,’ I say, stepping over a collection of bent street signs.

  ‘It came with the house,’ he says.

  ‘What are these for?’ I point to a pile of phone books while shuffling around an old bike that is propped against the wall.

  ‘The fireplace.’

  ‘Are you a hoarder?’ I ask, because this seems on the cusp.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, this is all useful.’ He looks around at his useful things, smiling. ‘The bike just needs a new chain.’

  The hallway opens into a living room that is sparsely furnished. A sagging tartan couch faces a blank wall, with a projector setup off to the side. In front of the couch is a low coffee table, with a laptop and a fruit bowl, where an overdue electricity bill has been jammed between two rotting oranges.

  ‘I thought maybe we could watch some X-Files,’ Liam says, walking through to the kitchen. ‘Or anything by Fellini.’

  I sit on the couch listening to him open and close cup
boards for a few moments, before he emerges cradling a bong. ‘The password is “Nietzsche”, if you want to start looking.’

  He uses the neck of the bong to push the laptop towards me, but instead I uncross my legs and reach forward, touching his knee.

  ‘Where’s your bedroom?’ I ask.

  ‘Upstairs—but don’t you want some wine?’ He reaches under the couch and drags out a bottle of shiraz which he looks at intently. ‘Notes of peppercorn.’

  He unscrews the top and takes a swig before handing it to me, and as I drink, I find that the wine replaces any doubts or impatience with a harsh fizz.

  Liam pulls a lighter from his pocket and suctions the bong to his mouth, inhaling deeply. The water bubbles raucously as I take another glug of wine and wonder how long we will spend anaesthetising ourselves here before moving to the bedroom and doing it all again—how many layers of oblivion we need this afternoon.

  Liam coughs a long plume of smoke at the ceiling, and I feel that the answer for both of us is: perhaps quite a lot.

  ‘What do you study?’ I ask.

  ‘Biomed,’ he says.

  ‘Clever,’ I say.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, it’s so hard.’ He strokes the neck of the bong. ‘And you?’

  ‘Make-up artist,’ I say, burping.

  ‘Ooh la la,’ he says. ‘Fancy.’

  Liam switches the projector on, and after a moment the credits to a film begin to play.

  ‘Arthouse,’ Liam says, ‘Very experimental, and won a bunch of awards.’

  After twenty-five minutes the film officially starts, and we sit side by side as the daily minutiae of a couple living in a rural shack unfolds. Every scene of the film is centred around their constant quest for firewood. I sip the wine steadily, trying to understand if there is more to the storyline than what I am seeing. At one point I look over at Liam, who is watching intently as the man on screen, now wearing a large hat, says, It’s getting dark, as a woman in a stained dress nods wearily. Somewhere around the two-hour mark, the couple begin breaking furniture in order to feed the fire. Liam interrupts the film to segue into talking about his ex-girlfriend. ‘No hard feelings,’ he says suddenly, dragging both hands down his face and standing up from the couch as the couple on the screen behind him hurl chunks of wood into the fireplace.

  ‘She’s not interested in dating cis white guys anymore, which I get—I totally, totally get.’

  He walks around the coffee table, rubbing one hand across the top of his chest.

  ‘My dudes and I have had our day in the sun,’ he says, before circling back to the bong.

  His eyes are washed red and he’s using his tongue and lips more than necessary when he speaks, and I’m aware that it’s not a signal to go, but it’s not really a sign to stay either, so I collect my bag and leave before any more discussion unfolds. Talking generally wears my patience out faster than almost anything else, but unfortunately people need talking to relax before they can connect physically. It’s so misguided. Attaining a quota of words that each person has to say in order to unlock the possibility of sex is completely unnecessary. It’s exhausting.

  Disappointed, I carefully walk back along the concrete path towards the car. What I needed was to be flattened, squashed and folded under another person. I can’t just remain all stretched out from the day. Like all the people I see in the late afternoons, or evenings, or early hours of the morning, he was going to move me out of my head and into my body. He was going to fill me up with physical feeling to the point where emotions and thoughts were wrung out. And then sayonara, thank you very much.

  Once, I told a man what I needed from him and he recoiled, appalled. He said that I was basically using people, crushing them between my pincers. He tapped his thumb and forefinger together to demonstrate. I was equally horrified that he had responded so poorly to my honesty, and so I told him he was already being crushed by the weight of his own ego, and what a goose, what an absolute goose of a man, to think he could ever speak to a stranger like that. He had no idea why I like the things I like, or why I need to do the things I do. Now, I keep my needs to myself.

  Standing by the car, I try to salvage the evening by sending three messages to my other matches.

  Heyyy

  Heyyy

  Heyyy

  ‘Shit, I’m sorry!’ Liam yells from the doorway, and I spin around, taking a few steps back towards his house, ready to forgive him and move forward.

  ‘Talking about my ex was very cathartic, thank you, but you should come back.’ He shifts his weight from foot to foot. ‘Please?’

  ‘Only if it’s for sex,’ I say, switching my phone to silent and crossing my arms.

  He nods and raises a hand in the air, as if taking an oath. ‘Oh, absolutely.’

  His bedroom has stark white walls and a low futon covered in an off-white sheet. I drop my bag on the floor and unzip my dress, letting it fall. I unclip my bra and sweep my underwear down and off. At one point I see him move as if to sit on the bed then second-guess himself and remain standing. He sheds everything except his boxer shorts in a quick shiver, and I fall onto him heavily.

  ‘Hold on,’ he says, reaching into the bedside drawer for a condom.

  I pull the waistband of his shorts down until his erection springs out. He rolls the condom on as I spit into my palm and wipe it down the length of the rubber, and then the wet crinkling of it sliding in and out becomes the only sound in the room.

  ‘I can put some music on …’ he says, with his hands either side of my hips, ready to lift me off.

  ‘No,’ I say. He has wasted enough time.

  I lean back so that I can see my body eating his, and we become the two-headed thing. He stares at the ceiling, while I gaze straight ahead at the long crack in the wall behind his bed. I don’t need to look at him because his face could be anyone’s. His eyes could be any colour. He could have any set of thirty-two teeth. Under the fluorescent bulb in his room we form a single unit. Like a pack of hounds at the gates of hell. Like Nefertiti and immortality. Together, we combine to be something more robust.

  I let my eyes blur until he is just a warm beige lump underneath me.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ he says. ‘I feel like I really see you.’ He brushes one hand across my chest, sweeping away the hair that has fallen in front of my boobs.

  ‘I see you too,’ I say evenly, while squinting so much that my vision clouds to the point where I lose any sense of colour.

  ‘It’s so nice to feel seen,’ he says, trying to grab a nipple.

  ‘It’s so rare,’ I say, doubling down on the speed I’m moving, until we become the beast, outrunning our past experiences and day jobs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I wake up the day after Jennifer’s funeral with twenty-three missed calls from my brother. I sit upright and scroll down the list. Ten from Vincent. Two from Hugh. Five from Carmen. Something has happened. Something went wrong at the funeral yesterday; I should have stayed to make sure she was presented well. Her lips weren’t sealed properly. One eyelid could have opened. The mother might have complained. I should have checked all the seals before leaving.

  I shuffle along the length of the bed and call Simon back.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I whisper, while dressing quickly.

  Simon wails into the receiver, sounding sticky and wet.

  ‘Tell me!’ I whisper-shout, trying to keep my voice down so Liam doesn’t wake up. I can’t believe I fell asleep here. Unacceptable. I must have been exhausted from several hours of experimental film.

  ‘Mum’s unconscious. They’re saying she might die. Just come and meet us at the hospital.’

  He hangs up and I stare at the screen of my phone. I press redial and he answers, snivelling. There is the loud muffled sound of what might be a tissue being dragged across the receiver and I hear Vincent in the background: ‘Tell her to hurry.’

  The noise stops and Simon says, ‘Vincent said you should hurry.’

 
Vincent again in the background: ‘Tell her it’s an emergency.’

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ says Simon.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I say, stabbing at the screen until the call ends.

  I stand in the middle of Liam’s room, shaking. My lips feel like they are migrating to the edges of my face. A pain like I have been smiling too much pulls my mouth open, not in a smile, but something the same size.

  I rush to pull on my dress, leaving it open, which makes the panels either side of the zipper flap open and hit the back of my arms each time I bend to pick something up. It would be helpful if the curtains were open so I didn’t have to hunt around in the dark for my shoes. I crouch next to the bed and run my hands across the carpet, feeling underneath. My fingers touch some threadbare socks, a tennis ball, a bottle of eye drops. Finally my shoes, but my fingers can’t quite grab them. I keep dropping them like my hands are the claw in one of those arcade games. It’s an emergency; there’s no time for this nonsense. An emergency. I’m in one. When my mum was dying I couldn’t even pick up my shoes. A sock springs away from my fingers. Couldn’t even put on socks, I’ll say. Too distressed. I need to piss but there’s no time to piss!

  I run down the steps two at a time and walk into the lounge, where a petite woman is sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, her cheeks full of cereal and milk.

  ‘Got to go,’ I say, racing past. ‘Family emergency.’